What is an “identity”?

1. What is an “identity”? • Culture as managed diversity (Wallace) • People who have the same culture can predict each other • Identity may be practiced through shared images and discourses

2. Statist Identities • “nation state” • the Other is other countries

3. Culture is managed diversity (Wallace) • Identity needs an Other • We watch ourselves from the position of the Other • Different Canadians have different Others

4. Statist identity and ethnic identities in Canada • The Other of prototypical Anglo-Canadian: the American, the French Quebecker, the ethnic, the rest of the world • prototypical Canadian identity is primarily statist • The (main) Other of the “ethnics”: the prototypical North American • Ethnic identity in Canada is diasporic

5. French Identity in Quebec • The Other is English North America • Modern Franco-Quebec identity is statist (localized in a territory)

6. Shared images • the flag • nature • mounties • Sioux Indians

8. Shared discourses • How Canadians are Different • Hockey • Weather • Canada the Civilized Country

9. Weather in Canada • “something we love to hate, and nevertheless must hate to lose” (208) • cannot appreciate cold in a “colonized public domain” (210) that valorizes business and pleasure

10. Weather as a Discourse Topic • Weather = nature vs. culture • Romantic weather • Weather as a threat • Weather disasters • Weather as we don’t talk about it

11. How can • the indomitable, unpredictable, and anti-disciplinary excesses of winter precipitation • be admitted into a public discourse that is so much ordered and enabled (as satellite views remind us daily) by the frame of technological mastery • without appearing to be caught in a pre-modern, pre-adult condition of perverse glee? (210)

12. It is • almost impossible to survive a winter free from ritual performances of betrayal. • Can we detect a symptomology of sublimated guilt? (211) • - Guilt about being more consumerist than patriotic

13. Intermeteorological Colonization Europeans colonize Canada Americans colonize Canada [How about non-European Canadians?]

14. Multicultural policy • characterizes the “ethnic” as “a people whose static cultural practices are located both in a past and elsewhere” (30)

15. “Multicultural” • 1. Consisting of more than one culture • 2. Tolerant of all cultures • 3. Poor and/or not white; esp. originating in the developing world • esp. in discussing education and immigration

16. Canadian Discourses about the Developing World • Canada - the civilized country • Third World - in need of help • poor • undemocratic • cruel • “U.S. dominates, Canada helps” • peace-keeping

17. Multiculturalism and the Developing World • Discourse extended to immigrants and their children • Immigrants and their children “view” themselves from the “Canadian” position • They may buy into the discourse • This strengthens statist identity in Canada • it is the patriotic thing to do

18. “Ethnic” counter-discourses • b) extoll home country vs. Canada • c) develop a counter-identity • e.g. diasporic, “nomadic” identity

19. Black Identity and the State • statist (nation-state) identity makes demands on Black identity • diaspora identity makes other demands

20. “Blackening” • Somalis • from outside • from inside

21. Nomadicism • diasporic cultures • Jews • Afro-diaspora • a challenge to statist identities

22. Who Owns Canadian Weather?